September 2006 - Posts
3/9/06 It’s a small world
The first period of being on my own whilst Geoff was in the UK wasn’t too bad. Brian (the electrician) was here most of the time working away and we now have decent lights in the living room - I can at last see to cook properly! As I had thought he did prove to be a good source of information and the best outcome of all was an introduction to a fellow Geordie lady (Julie) who lives about 1km down the road! She has been here for 20+ years and is married to a farmer. But she comes from Jarrow originally which is 5mls from where I was brought up and I actually went to school in Jarrow! It was really great to hear her accent when she came to call. She couldn’t believe that there was a fellow Geordie here either!
The other startling thing to happen this week is that I got talking to the elderly lady who lives with her husband in the hamlet for 9 months of the year. She turns out to speak fantastic English! Apparently she was a translator in her early working days and spent a year in England. Although she claims not to have spoken English for 20+ years she puts my French to shame!
The gifts of produce continue to arrive. So far this week we have been given a basket full of peaches ( the elderly lady in the village) and jam and a huge marrow(Julie).
Fortunately Matthew and Christine have been here for a few days so we have had help in eating all the goodies! Again we have had a nice time showing them around and getting their opinions on the gite. Christine and I did some exploring of the shops in Issoire and discovered a wedding dress shop! She was amazed to find the fantastic dresses were half the price of those in England. She now has a dilemma as to whether to try and buy The Dress here or not!
The chambres d`hotes and gite marketing continues. We now have the final drafts of the business cards and stationary and the first draft of the web site copy. We have been working on that this week. Both of our offspring have declared the gite ready for renting so we just now need the world to know of our existence!
Geoff has made some progress with his attempts to get people interested in his English lessons. I got talking to a lady in the dress shop who was looking for an English course and gave her our number and Geoff had two responses from his ad in the local free paper. All of these leads are thinking about the lessons and have said they will ring back.
One of our big problems here at the moment is that every time we take one step forward we seem to hit a snag and take two steps back! A classic example of this has been our quest to buy wood for our wood burning stoves. You would think that living within spitting distance of a national forest with thousands of trees in each direction , this would be an easy task. But no – everyone seems to have their own private supplier and no-one can give us a name! However today we made a bit of progress by visiting a sawmill in a local village and persuading the guy there to sell us a huge amount (it seems to me) of off cuts. Then we find we have to ring up another guy to arrange delivery….then we arrive home to find the phone is not working…you see what I mean! Anyway the wood is now ordered and the guy (hopefully) will deliver it next week. Watch this space!!!
One more problem is that Chester (our dog) seems to have become a tic magnet! We have had to perform the delightful task of pulling these lovely (not) creatures our with tweezers twice now. He is having to submit to the indignity of being thoroughly examined every time he goes out for a walk! Not a happy dog!
10/09/06 Busy week
It is so good to be able to update this again from our own computer! We have had a very busy time since I last wrote anything it is difficult to know where to start. We have continued with our integration attempts by inviting various neighbours for aperitifs and this has worked really well. We particularly enjoyed the company of Paul and Suzette before they decamped to their apartment in Issoire for the winter months. They were really kind and gave us lots of excellent advice about local services. Geoff has had his first French haircut, has joined a Pilates class in Issoire and I have enrolled for a water colour class which starts in October – all contacts given by Suzette. We have also been given several jars of jam, 8lbs of redcurrants and a basket of Mirabelle plums. These things just arrive on our table sometimes when we are out – people are really kind and welcoming.
The abundance of redcurrants, not to mention the plums and peaches from our own trees have meant that jam making has been taking up a lot of my time! I was a bit peeved to have to buy some jam jars though! We threw a lot of my carefully hoarded ones out when we moved – mistake! I still have to make some blackberry jam – there are so many fantastic bramble bushes here. I only hope that we get enough people to eat all this jam!
Hazel and her friend Hannah have been to visit for a week. They were our first visitors to stay in the gite and have given us a few tips regarding things they liked and some they didn’t! Overall though it got a pretty resounding “thumbs up” from them both. Hannah told us, when she arrived, that she found it difficult to sleep but she needed to be aroused every day at10-10 30!! The air here really knocks you out!
We went out and about whilst the girls were here and did some touristy stuff which was good fun and also allowed us to see some more of the area for ourselves. We went up the Puy de Sancy and the Puy de Dome ( both excellent trips) and visited several little places near here. We also had a good mooch around the shops in Clermont Ferrand which was great. Hazel made me speak lots of French too so that has done me a lot of good. My confidence is really improving when I speak, as you will see later in this post!
Our friends from Paris, Marc and Michelle, have also been to stay for a couple of days. Marc is a computer whiz and it is because of his hard work that we are now on line. They too thought the house and gite were lovely and enjoyed exploring the area with us.
Geoff has made an appointment to see the maire next week and has asked for some dustbins and for the name of someone who will sell us some wood for the fires – progress!
Business wise, now that we are on line I can make some headway with marketing the gite. I have been telling all and sundry that we are now open for visitors ( including an elderly lady who started to chat to me whilst I was waiting for the girls to return from the summit of Sancy. She took one of my English leaflets for the phone number and address! All of this was done in French – how`s that for improvement?) but we really need to get the website going now. Louise has sent me the proofs for the business cards and stationary and a copy of the holding page for the website all of which look terrific. We should also have a domain name fully registered soon which is good news.
At the moment I am all alone. The girls left this morning as did Geoff on his first trip to the UK to see his clients. It is very strange after having all the comings and goings of the last week to be suddenly very quiet again. I do have the arrival of the electrician/ plumber to look forward to tomorrow though. He is putting in more sockets and lights in the kitchen. He is an English guy who has lived here for 12+ years and again I think will be a good source of local information and contacts.
Enough for now – a bientot as we now say!
25/08/06 The big sort out!
The lorry arrived at 8am on Thursday, and as I had feared all along couldn’t get round the tight bend leading up to the house! So all the furniture had to be carried up the drive! The guys were not thrilled by this but got on with the job as efficiently as ever. We have so much stuff! I thought I had got rid of so much but it just kept coming and coming! I got to the stage where I never wanted to see another packing box as long as I live! All the carefully drawn plans of what was to go where were lost as walls of boxes descended from the lorry! However the guys finished unloading by lunchtime and set off to their next delivery in Bergerac, leaving us with a colossal unpacking job to do.
We have spent the days since then steadily unpacking the dreaded boxes and trying desperately to find home for all the stuff. I was very pleased to find that this region of France is well into car boot or “Vide Grenier” sales (as they are known here) We already have several boxes for the first one we can get a stall at! Slowly but surely we are beginning to get put straight but our original plan of keeping the lovely open plan attic clear is in tatters as we have had to resort to storing a lot of the stuff up there. Geoff is also becoming a regular visitor to the local dechetterie (tip) with empty boxes and stuff we have thrown out! He is almost on first name terms with the guy there!
We managed to take a bit of time off at the weekend to go to a classical music recital in nearby Usson church, where we nearly got locked in as the organizers could not open the doors at the end and had to summon outside assistance! We had a lovely day at another fete on Sunday, this time watching folk dancing in the streets.
Our big problem at the moment is that we still are not connected to the internet. France Telecom have investigated and found a fault on the line which they are supposedly trying to fix but it is really frustrating. We have been picking up messages in an internet café but it is far from satisfactory. I am also very keen to press ahead with the gite marketing and the website and this is all having to be put on hold.
The gite is ready to go now and looks great. We put up some pictures today and it feels very homely now. Hazel and her friend Hannah are due out here next week to “road test” it and give us their opinions.
The other big bit of news is that we have bought a car! Again a daunting task for anyone who does not speak French, but after a morning of trawling around garages in Clermont Ferrand we found a good Ford Fusion car with very low mileage and soon had the deal done. We have also sorted out the insurance for it and will collect it next week. Very exciting!
Hopefully I will update next week from our own computer!
The next few installments will be posted now we have a (very slow) internet connection. I have been writing them and saving them in sequence but apologies for several all at once!
16/ 08/06 We have arrived!
Well we are here in Chabanol and we are slowly but surely getting things sorted out. We had a pretty smooth final few days in England cleaning the rented house once the furniture had been collected by the removal firm. I only lost it once and that was when I had a few tears over throwing away the kids toothbrushes – it somehow felt very final! The trip out here also went well. Chester (our dog) was as good as gold though he did get very confused by being allowed to sleep in our bedroom in the overnight stop hotel! That is not normally allowed! We arrived at the house on August !0th .
Our first visit to the hypermarche was a trying one. It took ages as we struggled to find equivalent foodstuff and tried to keep the bill down. I am so used to buying more or less the same things each week and suddenly everything is very different. Geoff was quite patient at first but I could see his attention span going after a while so we gave up and returned chez nous with a few things short! Somehow shopping for holiday food was not so trying! It is fantastic to have the choice of 30 or 40 cheeses but it does take a lot of time deciding which one to buy!
We have also managed to get a French bank account sorted and will soon be in possession of bank cards and a cheque book which will make life a lot easier. I’m so pleased that Geoff’s French is as good as it is because there was a lot to take in as the bank manager was trying to explain all the different options to us. Geoff also came into his own when it came to sorting out the telephone too and we are now fully connected to France Telecom (albeit with a horrible crackly line but this is improving). I really do not know how these tasks could have been done if you do not speak French.
Our first weekend here coincided with the annual fete in St Etienne sur Usson, our nearest village so we went along to the “bal” on the Saturday night and were the objects of many curious stares but no-one plucked up enough courage to ask who we were! We had a bit of a dance and quite enjoyed speculating who the maire might be! We returned to the village the next day for the highlight of the fete – a parade of donkey carts though the village followed by a competition over a course of obstacles and gates. It was very entertaining and this time we did speak to a couple of people, but it was very much a “village “ affair and we felt a bit out of place. It didn’t stop us returning in the evening to watch the fireworks though!
The weather has been a bit disappointing – quite cool and showery – which has been a pity as we wanted to sit outside and eat and this has not always been possible. Our neighbours in the holiday house assure us that this is not typical weather for August.
On Monday our friends David and Ann arrived with their caravan to stay for a couple of nights which was nice. We enjoyed showing them around a bit and they thought the houses were really lovely. We were also very grateful for their help in moving the furniture from the main house to the gite as we would never have managed this on our own. These French wardrobes weigh a ton! The main house is now pretty empty and awaits the arrival of our furniture on Thursday